This invention relates generally to social networking, and in particular to managing communications directed to various audiences in a social networking system.
A social networking system user may be an individual or any other entity, such as a business or other non-person entity. Users of social networking systems upload, view, and interact with content items within the social networking system. In this context, content items may include any kind of content that a social networking system user or other object may create, upload, edit, or interact with, such as messages, queued messages (e.g., email), text and SMS (short message service) messages, comment messages, messages sent using any other suitable messaging technique, an HTTP link, HTML files, images, videos, audio clips, documents, document edits, calendar entries or events, and other computer-related files. Likewise, a content item may include a statement about a social networking system object or action. For example, if a user recommends a social networking system group to another user, or if a user becomes friends with another user and posts an indication of the friendship on the social networking system, the recommendation and post are content items. Thus, a content item may be any statement, communication, or created object in the social networking system.
Social networking systems commonly provide mechanisms that allow users to interact and communicate within their social networks. For instance, a user may be able to send a content item to one or more other users. Content items may be uploaded to or created within many social networking system contexts, such as newsfeeds, user profiles, user walls, group pages, event pages, private messages, email messages, comment threads, message chains, photo albums, or any other social networking system context capable of displaying a content item. Likewise, content items may be uploaded or created external to the social networking system's primary website, for instance through partner websites and/or websites with social networking system plug-ins. Collectively, social networking system contexts capable of displaying a content item are referred to as “spaces.” Administrators of a space, if any, are referred to as the “owners” of the space. Creating or uploading a content item to a space is referred to as “posting” to the space.
A group of social networking system users able to view a content item is referred to as an “audience.” The social networking system user who uploads or creates a content item is referred to as the “author” of the content item. Social networking system users can associate other users with content items. Associating a user with a content item is referred to as “tagging” the user in the content item, and the user associated with a content item is referred to as the “tagged user.” Entities other than user may also be tagged in a content item.
When a user is tagged in a content item, the association between the content item and the tagged user may be displayed in conjunction with the content item. For example, if a user is tagged in a message, the tagged user's name and/or a hyperlink to the user's profile may appear in connection with the message such as within the message or below it. Likewise, the association between the content item and the tagged user may be displayed in conjunction with other tagged users or content items, or may be displayed in a social networking system space, such as a user profile. Tagging may include any form of associating a user with a content item, including linking the tagged user to the content item by including a hyperlink to the profile of the tagged user, mentioning the tagged user's name in a wall post, identifying the tagged user in a photo, or any other form of association between the user and the content item both within the context of and external to a social networking system. It should be noted that tagging is not limited to an association between a person-entity and a content item, but may also include an association between a non-person entity and a content item.
Traditionally, social networking systems have allowed the author of a content item to dictate the audience for the content item, subject to the privacy rules of the space to which the content item is posted, the privacy rules of the owner of the space, and the privacy rules of any users tagged in the content item. For example, an author may upload a photo to his profile and allow all of his friends to view the photo. In this example, if the author tags a user in the photo, the photo may appear in the tagged user's profile if the tagged user's privacy settings allow tagged photos to appear in the tagger user's profile, but the photo will still be viewable only to friends of the author. In other words, the tagged user may prevent users from viewing a content item on the tagged user's profile or in another space owned by the tagged user, but current social networking systems do not allow a tagged user to expand the audience of the content item.
In social interactions outside the context of a social networking system, a speaker (e.g., the author) can make a statement (e.g., the content item) about another person (e.g., the tagged user), and the tagged user is free to repeat the statement to additional listeners irrespective of whether the author of the statement intended for the additional listeners to hear the statement. This freedom of repeating speech creates a social economy that allows the original speaker to weigh the benefit and costs of making statements prior to speaking, creating a self-monitored speech regulation environment. The benefits of this social economy may be realized in a social networking system, lowering the monitoring and filtering costs and remains a need for solutions that enable users of a social networking system to communicate in ways that more accurately reflect communications in the real world.